Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850-1914

by Alexis Easley

Overview

This study examines literary celebrity in Britain from 1850 to 1914. Through lively analysis of rare cultural materials, Easley demonstrates the crucial role of the celebrity author in the formation of British national identity. As Victorians toured the homes and haunts of famous writers, they developed a sense of shared national heritage. At the same time, by reading sensational accounts of writers’ lives, they were able to reconsider conventional gender roles and domestic arrangements. As women were featured in interviews and profiles, they were increasingly associated with the ephemerality of the popular press and were often excluded from emerging narratives of British literary history, which defined great literature as having a timeless appeal. Nevertheless, women writers were able to capitalize on celebrity media as a way of furthering their own careers and retelling history on their own terms. Press attention had a more positive effect on men’s literary careers since they were expected to assume public identities; however, in some cases, media exposure had the effect of sensationalizing their lives, bodies, and careers. With the development of proto-feminist criticism and historiography, the life stories of male writers were increasingly used to expose unhealthy domestic relationships and imagine ideal forms of British masculinity.

The first section of Literary Celebrity explores the practice of literary tourism in Victorian Britain, focusing specifically on the homes and haunts of Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Harriet Martineau. This investigation incorporates analysis of fascinating cultural texts, including maps, periodicals, and tourist guidebooks. Easley links the practice of literary tourism to a variety of cultural developments, including nationalism, urbanization, spiritualism, the women’s movement, and the expansion of popular print culture. The second section provides fresh insight into the ways that celebrity culture informed the development of Victorian historiography. Easley demonstrates how women were able to re-tell history from a proto-feminist perspective by writing contemporary history, participating in architectural reform movements, and becoming active in literary societies. In this chapter she returns to the work of Harriet Martineau and introduces a variety of lesser-known contributors to the field, including Mary Gillies and Mary Ward. Literary Celebrity concludes with a third section focused on the expansion of celebrity media at the fin de siècle. These chapters and a brief coda link the popularization of celebrity news to the de-canonization of women writers, the professionalization of medicine, the development of the open space movement, and the institutionalization of English studies. These investigations elucidate the role of celebrity media in the careers of Charlotte Robinson, Marie Corelli, Mary Braddon, Harriet Martineau, Thomas Carlyle, Ernest Hart, and Octavia Hill.

Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644531273
Publisher:	University of Delaware Press
Publication date:	04/29/2011
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

Alexis Easley is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 9

Introduction 11

Part I Celebrity and Literary Tourism

1 The Virtual City: Literary Tourism and the Construction of "Dickens's London" 27

2 The Haunting of Victorian London: Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot 48

3 The Woman of Letters at Home: Harriet Martineau and the Lake District 69

Part II Celebrity and Historiography

4 Harriet Martineau: Gender, National Identity, and the Contemporary Historian 95

5 Rooms of the Past: Victorian Women Writers, History, and the Reconstruction of Domestic Space 113

Part III Celebrity and Fin de Siècle Print Culture

6 Women Writers and Celebrity News at the Fin de Siècle 137

7 Representations of the Authorial Body in the British Medical Journal 156

8 The Celebrity Cause: Octavia Hill, Virtual Landscapes, and the Press 175

Coda: Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Canon Formation 195

Notes 207

Bibliography 245

Index 265

Editorial Reviews

Alexis Easley's Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850-1914, engages well with how authors negotiated, and were shaped by, the increasing visibility of their profession and the place of the celebrity author within national identity formation. Easley deftly offers keen insights into how the Victorians began casting authors as cultural exemplars, turning their homes into sites of touristic visits, and links the expansion of mass periodical press and media at the latter end of the century with a rise in celebrity media and cultural framing of authors as media stars.--The Year's Work In English Studies

In this intriguing study, Easley (Univ. of St. Thomas, St. Paul) joins Tricia Lootens (Lost Saints, 1996) and Linda Peterson (Becoming a Woman of Letters, CH, Oct'09, 47-0730) in studying the intersections of gender, cultural authority, and new definitions of authorship. Arguing that Victorian celebrity culture spread in conjunction with popular tourism and mass-market periodicals, the author focuses on "literary tourism," in which readers journey (literally and figuratively) to their heroes' near-sanctified "homes and haunts." In section 1, she analyzes urban and rural literary tourism, showing how the construction of authorial domesticity in land- and cityscapes shifted abruptly from male authors (Dickens) to female (Barrett Browning, Eliot, Rossetti, Martineau). In section 2, Easley turns to celebrity and history writing, both by historians like Martineau constructing and manipulating their public image, and by those who studied past authors through architectural spaces (some of which became tourist destinations). And in section 3 she discusses how gendered notions of authorship and fame emerged in different print markets, from popular gossip rags to "serious" medical journals. Although the chapter on Octavia Hill's housing and landscape activism needed to be better integrated, the book as a whole convincingly historicizes the emergence of modern celebrities, especially female celebrities.--CHOICE

From the Publisher

Alexis Easley’s Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850–1914, engages well with how authors negotiated, and were shaped by, the increasing visibility of their profession and the place of the celebrity author within national identity formation. Easley deftly offers keen insights into how the Victorians began casting authors as cultural exemplars, turning their homes into sites of touristic visits, and links the expansion of mass periodical press and media at the latter end of the century with a rise in celebrity media and cultural framing of authors as media stars.

The Year's Work In English Studies

In this intriguing study, Easley (Univ. of St. Thomas, St. Paul) joins Tricia Lootens (Lost Saints, 1996) and Linda Peterson (Becoming a Woman of Letters, CH, Oct'09, 47-0730) in studying the intersections of gender, cultural authority, and new definitions of authorship. Arguing that Victorian celebrity culture spread in conjunction with popular tourism and mass-market periodicals, the author focuses on "literary tourism," in which readers journey (literally and figuratively) to their heroes' near-sanctified "homes and haunts." In section 1, she analyzes urban and rural literary tourism, showing how the construction of authorial domesticity in land- and cityscapes shifted abruptly from male authors (Dickens) to female (Barrett Browning, Eliot, Rossetti, Martineau). In section 2, Easley turns to celebrity and history writing, both by historians like Martineau constructing and manipulating their public image, and by those who studied past authors through architectural spaces (some of which became tourist destinations). And in section 3 she discusses how gendered notions of authorship and fame emerged in different print markets, from popular gossip rags to "serious" medical journals. Although the chapter on Octavia Hill's housing and landscape activism needed to be better integrated, the book as a whole convincingly historicizes the emergence of modern celebrities, especially female celebrities.

Choice

In this intriguing study, Easley (Univ. of St. Thomas, St. Paul) joins Tricia Lootens (Lost Saints, 1996) and Linda Peterson (Becoming a Woman of Letters, CH, Oct'09, 47-0730) in studying the intersections of gender, cultural authority, and new definitions of authorship. Arguing that Victorian celebrity culture spread in conjunction with popular tourism and mass-market periodicals, the author focuses on "literary tourism," in which readers journey (literally and figuratively) to their heroes' near-sanctified "homes and haunts." In section 1, she analyzes urban and rural literary tourism, showing how the construction of authorial domesticity in land- and cityscapes shifted abruptly from male authors (Dickens) to female (Barrett Browning, Eliot, Rossetti, Martineau). In section 2, Easley turns to celebrity and history writing, both by historians like Martineau constructing and manipulating their public image, and by those who studied past authors through architectural spaces (some of which became tourist destinations). And in section 3 she discusses how gendered notions of authorship and fame emerged in different print markets, from popular gossip rags to "serious" medical journals. Although the chapter on Octavia Hill's housing and landscape activism needed to be better integrated, the book as a whole convincingly historicizes the emergence of modern celebrities, especially female celebrities.

CHOICE